Tag Archives: 8 rating

Sure, it’s healthy, wholesome, warm, nourishing, and all that jazz, but it’s also ugly. Those moist, lumpy, and occasional drippy beige chunks? Second only to canned tuna on my list of “tasty foods I’d swipe left on if Betty Crocker made a dating app.”

That’s why I’m giving props to Ideal Oats for trying to glamorize, or at least revolutionize, the classic breakfast with a face for radio. Billed as “Oatmeal, Reinvented,” Ideal Oats not only aims to help the fitness-conscious with 20g of protein per, but it also aims to overthrow the oatmeal aisle oligopoly of Apple Cinnamon and Maple Brown Sugar by bringing in never-before-seen flavors.

Needless to say, as someone whose recent exercise log primarily consists of long walks to the back of the grocery store to buy more Reese’s Cup coffee creamer, it’s the flavors that make most excited for this review.

All three cups featured below were sent to me by Ideal Oats, but I promise the freeness of the oats won’t influence my review. When it comes to peanut butter and bananas, I don’t lie: not after the infamous “Mario Kart PB&J Incident of 2008.”

But I’m still more familiar with fictional trails than being fit, which is why I won’t penalize Grape-Nuts Trail Mix Crunch for its box’s blatant lie. See, this stuff isn’t new: it’s just a rebrand of 5-year old cereal Grape-Nuts Fit—a fact Grape-Nuts itself confirmed on my Instagram.

Luckily, I never reviewed Grape-Nuts Fit before, so it won’t be redundant if I do so now. Plus this potent little brick of a cereal box weighs in at over 1 pound, which, given its size, makes it count as powerlifting every time I pour from it.

There, I said it. If Vladimir Nutin and his secret legume agents take me down, you’ll find my full manifesto buried 50 paces east of the old Siberian walnut factory.

All I’m saying is that, while peanut and almond butter is good and all, I think other nut butters deserve their moment in the sunflower oil-emulsified sun.

Cashew butter is delightful. Pecan butter is an underrated gem. And wingnut butter contains so much iron!

Yet General Mills and Nature Valley chose to use peanut butter and almond butter to flavor their newest pouches of granola. I’ll forgive them for now because they used honey in their almond butter granola, but if I’m martyred for this expository review, I’ll be leaving a scathing eulogy.

Oh well, might as well munch while I wait for my door to be punched down. Continue reading →

You know, chaos scoops: when you grab a big handful of a mixed foodstuffs with blatant disregard for flavor sorting or portion control, slam it in your mouth with the grace of a Legends of the Hidden Temple contestant putting the Silver Monkey together, and relish in a lawless hodgepodge of melded flavors.

Trail mix is good about this (as long as you maintain a respectable nuts-to-M&M’s ratio), Skittles scoops are hedonistically sweet, and jelly beans are the definition of risk vs. reward—you get one black licorice or cinnamon in there and it’s a whammy for your digestive system.

That’s why I was curious about Special K’s new Berries & Peaches cereal, the third in their probiotic line of Nourishcereals (I hear if you eat them while taking an antibiotic, your gut flora unites to punch you in the colon). With so many ingredients—flakes, dried strawberries/blueberries/peaches, and yogurty bits, could Special K possibly pull such complex choreography? Or would it taste like a fire in my (Jelly) Belly?

Well it’s time to make a sacrifice for the people. If I start posting pro-bacteria propaganda next week, know that I’ve been compromised. Continue reading →

Let’s raise a toast to 2018: a bowl of Kashi’s new Cinnamon French Toast Cereal, to be more specific.

Yes, I figured this warm ‘n’ cozy-sounding, breakfast-within-a-breakfast cereal would be a fitting first review for the year of MMXVII for two reasons: one, it’s pretty darn healthy and New Year’s friendly, at 90 calories per 3/4 cup serving with 5 grams of fiber for “spring cleaning,” and just 6 grams of sugar.

Oh, and the second reason? Because Kashi’s bulging little toasts here adopt a “new year, new me” philosophy to deliciously remix a bunch of other cereal flavors you’ve probably already tried and shamefully binged a whole box of during while binge-watching The Office for so long that Netflix skipped asking if you were there and just asked, “Are you still okay?” Continue reading →

“What’s the best peanut butter cereal?” is perhaps one of breakfast’s most divisive questions—right up there with “is cereal a soup?”

(No, it’s not: soup is a concept, not a thing defined by its components. Please stop asking me.)

There are many who ardently support Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch. There are others who swear by Reese’s Puffs or new Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios (or at least, 50% of them). Some weirdos (like me) prefer the salted intricacies of Peanut Butter Puffins. And there are still others (me again) who desperately long for the return of JIF Cereal, going so far as to rally a posse of choosy moms to voice their cause.

But while peanut butter cereal has long been a small, yet hotly contested category, there’s a new contender in town, one with a long legacy of peanut butter snack cookie domination.

Yes, Nutter Butter Cereal is real, and it is debuting alongside Chips Ahoy! cereal to close a trilogy of “cerealized grade school cafeteria treat your mom used to carefully ration out in Ziploc bags, like seriously Ma, only two?”, a divine cereal lineage pioneered by the great creator: Oreo O’s.

Nutter Butter cookies have always been an aggressively peanut buttery cookie to me. So I’m not saying I want this cereal to gum my tongue to the roof of my mouth like tasty rubber cement, but if I’m left smacking my lips like a confused dog, I wouldn’t be upset. Continue reading →

I have to say, that of all the ring-shaped foods out there, I’m pretty glad doughnuts are the only ones that have been into not just one cereal, but several.

It’s not that I wouldn’t love to try a bagel, ditalini pasta, bundt cake, or onion ring: it’s just that I think the world at large, in its current state, is not ready to handle such concentric, near-Olympian power in their breakfast bowl. It’d be like if the Chaos Emeralds married the Dragon Balls.

Whew, hope you’re still reading after that horrible intro. My doughnut-based creativity has run drier than a stale cruller after talking so highly about Kellogg’s other Donut Shop cereal: Pink Donut. That stuff tasted like delightful animal crackers, so like Lard Lad, I’m already holding this Donut Shop Chocolate Donut Cereal to high standards.

Some things just make sense together. Like peanut butter and chocolate. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and bananas. Or peanut butter and analogies about things that go well together.

Oh, and chocolate and marshmallows, I guess.

That’s why it makes no sense that it took ’til 2017 for General Mills to realize just how many cents they’d make by putting mini marshmallows in Cocoa Puffs. From the humble Mallo Cup to being 2/3 of the iconic s’more, chocolate and marshmallows have a long history of delightfully gumming up people’s teeth.

But hot cocoa/hot chocolate (I refuse to take a stance on which name is better. As I’ve said before, I’m staying as neutral as a packet of Swiss Miss) is perhaps the most memorably cozy pairing of the two. Therefore, the only explanation for why this took so long is that Sonny always flies south for the winter. I’m willing to forgive him for going AWOL for Cocoa Puffs, so long as his redundantly named Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs are good. Since my childhood self used to think hot cocoa was made by microwaving chocolate milk, the bar is pretty low.

I still have nightmares about tepid, radiated and pasteurized dairy products.

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